Gorbachev hesitates - Mikhail Gorbachev delays implementation of Shatalin plan

IF THE WEEk's extraordinary events have demonstrated anything, it is that the Communist system, having suffered defeat after defeat in its unending battle with empirical reality, still has not surrendered its last position in the Soviet leaders' minds. As the hours tick away, the central authorities are feverishly devising ways to liberate the Soviet economy within the framework of that system. They are paying hp service to the Shatalin plan for transition to a market economy, but in practice they look at it with all the enthusiasm of doomed men peering into the abyss. [See "Seven Days That Shook the World," p. 26.1

Things are never what they seem in the Soviet Union, but the debate over the future of the Soviet economy is a particular exercise in surrealism. The first surprise came with Gorbachev's decision to support the Shatalin plan, which by clearing the way for private ownership, and devolving taxation and control over mineral resources to the republics, would have the effect of liquidating Communism and breaking up the Soviet Union. Gorbachev insisted, however, that

he was against the resignation of his prime minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, who will have the responsibility of implementing the Shatalin plan, to which he is totally opposed.

But each new day brings new confusion. With the Soviet economy disintegrating as a result of ill considered tinkering, Gorbachev's latest proposal is for a referendum on private land holding, which is a crucial feature of the Shatalin plan. Such a referendum would delay its implementation by months and could give its opponents enough time to kill it. This may be what Gorbachev has in mind, because he next persuaded the Supreme Soviet, the semi-parliament which the Communist Party apparatus still controls, to grant him emergency powers affecting wages and prices" (so much for the free market) and "the strengthening of law and order." This latter may involve "halting the activity of all institutions, including elective ones." Significantly, Gorbachev cited Lithuania as a place where he had not imposed presidential rule but might yet do so. It seems he has far from reconciled himself to the independence of the Soviet republics, which would become unavoidable under conditions of economic reform.

The whole spectacle is beginning to resemble the sauve qui peut atmosphere of Berlin in 1945. Fortunately, another voice has been heard in Moscow, that of the exiled master Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In a manifesto published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Solzhenitsyn made clear that there is no saving the Soviet Union or its parts within the current system. The wheel of history has turned, and the only answer for the current leaders is "public repentance" and the acknowledgment that they have "led the country into the abyss" and "do not know the way out."

Only this can prepare the way for the peaceful departure of the Communist authorities, which, when all is said and done, is the indispensable prerequisite for the country's resurrection.